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Children in Zaanstad see Sinterklaas as a fun family celebration and when it comes to the color of Zwarte Piet, they prefer so-called Chimney Pieten colored black by soot, according to Zaanstad Children's Ombudsman Martien van Does, Het Parool reports.

Van Does spoke to 200 children about Sinterklaas in the run-up to a debate evening on Wednesday about the holy man's national arrival at the Zaanse Schans on November 17th.

Ambulance personnel throughout the Netherlands will soon be equipped with bullet- and stab proof vests and helmets, based on advice from Ambulancezorg Nederland. The vests are intended to better protect paramedics in dangerous conditions and terror situations, NOS reports.

The paramedics will not be obliged to always wear the protective clothing, they can assess the situation themselves. According to Ambulancezorg Nederland, they have no recorded incidents in the past where paramedics needed bulletproof vests.

The quality of life in neighborhoods with many social rental housing is quickly deteriorating due to the many problem tenants that live there, says the branch association for housing corporations Aedes based by a study by Rigo Research en Advies, RTL Nieuws reports.

Amsterdam is using a new method to crack down on money laundering in the hospitality industry. The administrative court ruled that the burden of evidence can be switched. Which means that Amsterdam can ask new restaurants or pubs to prove their money is clean before issuing a permit, NOS reports.

Temperatures in De Bilt climbed to 19 degrees on Tuesday, making it the warmest November 6th in the Netherlands since temperature measurements started in 1901. The previous record was 17.1 degrees in 2005. This is the 13th heat record broken this year, Weeronline reports.

Westdorpe and Gilze-Rijen even had official warm days on Tuesday with maximums of 20.4 and 20.0 degrees respectively.

Zwarte Piet in his traditional form will no longer be welcome at the police's internal Sinterklaas celebrations from 2020. "The Sinterklaas party is a connecting party, but some expressions at that party hurt people. Where such painful experiences exist, we look together how we can solve that", the police said in a statement.

31 mayors of larger Dutch cities are calling on the Senate not to remove the appointment of mayors from the Dutch constitution, and to keep the procedure as is. Removing the appointment procedure from the constitution is the first step in enabling an elected mayor. The mayors are worried that this will result in them losing their connecting role as "father or mother for all residents, businesses and institutions", they wrote in an open letter to the Senate, the Volkskrant reports.

The Netherlands has approximately 500 jihadists and several thousand sympathizers of jihadist ideology, general intelligence service AIVD said in a report published on Monday. "They pose a potential threat. The threshold for committing an attack in the name of Islamic State or Al Qaeda seems to have decreased", the AIVD said, NU.nl reports.

Dutch society has been pressured by the revival of right-wing extremism over the past years, the National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism and Security said in a new report published on Monday. The Coordinator looked into right-wing extremist violence in Western Europe and the historical and international context of right-wing extremism in the Netherlands, NU.nl reports.

At least 40 thousand tourists have been affected by TravelBird's money problems, the majority of them are Dutch, according to guarantee fund SGR. The Amsterdam based travel agency filed for deferment of payment last week, newspaper AD reports.

A 23-year-old man from Dordrecth was stabbed to death in Breda during the early hours of Sunday morning. A 36-year-old man from Breda was arrested. The police believe the victim was a completely random target, based on witness statements and camera footage of the incident, NOS reports.

The incident happened on Adriaan van Bergenstraat at around 4:00 a.m. on Sunday. Responding officers found the young man bleeding heavily on the street. He was rushed to hospital, where he died a short time later.

A person was seriously injured in a "conflict" in a building on Burgemeester van Walsumlaan in Zwolle early on Monday morning, the police said on Twitter. The incident happened in a Salvation Army building, according to news wire ANP.

The victim was rushed to hospital with unknown injuries. A suspect was arrested, the police said.

A 66-year-old Dutch man was arrested in Kenya for sexually assaulting multiple underage girls in the African country. Hans V. is accused of "defiling" three girls, aged 8, 9, and 10 years, in 2016, the Kenyan police said on Twitter.

According to the police, V. was arrested in Kasarani by detectives from the Child Protection Unit on Thursday. He will appear in court on Friday.

The reason that hand grenades are increasingly used as threats in Amsterdam, is because they are cheap and relatively easy to come by, according to Amsterdam Police Chief Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg. The grenades regularly found in Amsterdam mainly come from Yugoslavia and Russia, and can be bought on the black market or dark web for as little as 5 to 20 euros each, he said to AT5.

Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen of Infrastructure did not know which types of Stint cargo bikes were on the public road until she temporarily banned the vehicles following a fatal accident in Oss. "If you find that there is no supervision, then I can only confirm that", she said in a parliamentary debate on Thursday evening, NU.nl reports.

Alderman Jan Zwiers of the municipality of Coevorden in Drenthe was assaulted by a resident of a caravan camp in the village of Steenwijksmoer on Wednesday. The alderman walked away with a black eye, broken glasses and torn pants, RTL Nieuws reports.

Zwiers visited Steenwijksmoer to talk to residents of the village about the caravan camp. The residents complained that residents of the camp create a lot of waste. The alderman also wanted to talk to the people living in the camp. Once there, he was attacked by the man.

On Thursday morning the police found a body while searching for missing 79-year-old Mona Baartsman in Heinenoord, Zuid-Holland, the police said on Twitter. Whether the body is that of the missing woman, is still under investigation.

A large fire is raging at recycling company Talen Afvalrecycling in Meppel on Thursday morning. The residents of 10 nearby houseboats were evacuated and are currently accommodated in the fire station, NOS reports.

Firefighters are having great difficulty extinguishing the fire, which is raging in several piles of waste, including a pile of wood. The fire brigade is currently trying to isolate the fire in the wood pile so that it can burn out in a controlled manner and not spread any further, a spokesperson for local safety office Veilgheidsregio Drenthe said to NOS.

The police again discovered a hand grenade on Bijlmerplein in Amsterdam Zuidoost. The explosive was found around 3:00 a.m. on Thursday, in the same spot where another grenade was found last week, according to AT5.

Defense's explosive removal department went to collect the object and took it away for further investigation, NU.nl reports. They concluded that it was indeed a hand grenade, and then dismantled the explosive.

Multiple Amsterdam businesses received an email threatening them with hand grenades or shootings if they do not pay 50 thousand euros in bitcoins to the sender. The police confirmed that multiple reports of this email have been received and they are investigating, AT5 reports.

The email, which is in the possession of AT5, was sent to at least three coffeeshops and Club ABE on Amstelstraat since May this year. The writer refers to the municipality of Amsterdam's policy to close businesses after a shooting or an explosive was found there.

Minister Carola Schouten of Agriculture wants to use a "light form" of genetic modification as part of her efforts to make agriculture in the Netherlands more sustainable. She is currently working with companies, farmers and Wageningen University to investigate the possibilities for experimenting with the so-called CRISPR-Cas method. She will send parliament a letter about their progress in the coming weeks, she said to the Volkskrant.

NS is critical about the increase of the low VAT rate, which also covers train tickets, from 6 to 9 percent. According to the rail company, this will make public transport more expensive compared to the car, and NS worries that more people will opt for the car instead, NOS reports.

The price for train tickets and subscriptions will increase on January 1st. According to NS, the increase is mainly due to the VAT increase.

A large fire broke out in covered shopping passage Proosdijpassage in the heart of Deventer on Wednesday morning. Multiple apartments were evacuated and five people were taken to hospital, four for smoke inhalation, the fifth with a broken leg, AD reports.

The fire broke out around 2:40 a.m. in the shopping passage between Lange Bisschopstraat and Strommarkt. Fire brigades from a wide area responded, due to the vulnerability of the inner city. When they arrived, the entire ceiling of the passage was already on fire.